Joanna Gilman Hyde

I suddenly feel older

by more than the fifteen years

since I dolefully reclined

in a wicker chaise longue

on the screened-in porch

built by My First Husband

— a porch sought for My Sanity —

yet used so briefly

I wonder how I remember it at all

–

This Deck I’m on now

in My Maturity

is an outpost for reverence

of All My Surroundings

occupied daily in good weather

and always in Good Mind:

I am healed now

— I long for nothing —

and have grown up

into The Full Observer

I was as The Child